


The Weight We Carry

by BohoBard



Series: Future Imperfect [1]
Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Adventures in the astral plane, F/M, Fluffy Angst, Hints at Chapter 18, Love will save us all, Romance, Spoilers through Chapter 17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 13:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14915942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BohoBard/pseuds/BohoBard
Summary: Oliver has a plan, Melanie has doubts. A brief encounter set between Chapters 17 and 18 that is mostly connubial fluff and beat poetry.





	The Weight We Carry

**Author's Note:**

> For Meg, who wants to believe Hawley is a hopeless romantic at heart because, damn it, they deserve to be happy.
> 
> The poem Oliver recites is Allen Ginsberg's "Song."

_I need to see you. Can you meet me?_ Melanie fought to keep the tremor out of her thoughts. _Just for a few minutes. I know there’s not much time left, but... Please?_

She went still, waiting for a response.

The plan outlined weeks prior was happening and happening impossibly fast. Seeds of an idea took root, sprouted, flourished. Now that it wasn’t some theoretical abstract, she couldn’t ignore it. There were so many moving parts hurtling towards the end game that it was difficult to keep track of who was doing what and when and where. Even Oliver, acting as mastermind and ringmaster, admitted he didn’t really know. But, he assured her, despite a few minor course corrections, everyone was fulfilling his or her role as anticipated.

_Please._

She held her breath as she waited, terrified he wouldn’t come to her. _Why should he?_ she told herself. _It’s a mistake to call on him now, so close to…to The End. Surely he needs to prepare, to get ready for whatever’s coming. I’m being needy, desperate, weak. If things go wrong, if anyone gets hurt – if **he** gets hurt - because I selfishly kept him - _

“Melanie?”

There he was, slipping from the shadows and out of the maze. He greeted her with a quizzical expression on his face, but his manner was relaxed, unrushed, unperturbed.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re getting ready and I shouldn’t bother you – “ _But I had to see you, just one last time. Before it happens. Just in case something goes wrong._

“Bother me?” He laughed softly as if at some secret joke whose punchline she wasn’t privy to. “Actually, I was, at the very moment you called, thinking of you.” His gap-toothed grin melted her heart. “We’ve always been incredibly in sync, you know…”

“Yes, we have,” she said, ignoring the tiny twinge down in her subconscious that reminded her that wasn’t always so. _Maybe he read my thoughts and is only telling me what I wanted to hear. Or maybe…_ “What could you need from me?”

The grin widened. “Clarity.”

Clarity. She knew exactly what he meant by that. Human or mutant, it was always the same. When he placed his hand against her cheek, she brought her own hand up to keep it there. His thumb stroked along her cheekbone and, suddenly, her yearning gave way to a raw hunger that was all-consuming.

”If you think there’s time…” Melanie murmured.

She reached for him as he pulled her close. His mouth crushed against her lips and she squeezed her eyes shut, held onto him with all her strength. He shoved her up against the wall and almost instantly the cold, hard stone at her back gave way and it felt like she was falling backwards and, simultaneously, like she was standing still.

She knew without looking the moment that their clothes disappeared. Other sensations flooded in and she barely had time to register them: the solid weight of his body on top of hers; her fingers threaded through his hair; the scratch of his beard against her bare skin; the electric stab of pleasure when he entered her; the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears. She struggled to catch her breath as her fingernails raked down his back, urging him towards completion.

The act was inevitable and desperate and over in scant minutes.

And then there was only the smell of sweat and sex and salt in the air. Salt? She opened her eyes slowly, glanced around, spotted a door in the opposite wall. Curiousity overruled her comfort and she slipped from the bed. Rough-hewn boards beneath her feet. A rustle of palm leaves. A soft slap of waves against wood. She gently drew back the edge of the curtain hanging in the doorway and gasped. The thatched bungalow they currently occupied was floating in the middle of a turquoise sea.

Not literally, of course. It was only a hastily constructed projection in the astral plane (and **_within_** the astral plane) that Oliver had conjured so they could have a few stolen moments together somewhere that didn’t reek of the minotaur. He hadn’t bothered to color in all the lines - the sea extended only as far as necessary to convey the concept of an open ocean – but Melanie appreciated the effort just the same. The water lapped at a purple-green-black swirl of nothingness just beyond its borders and, if she looked hard enough, she could see the void through the gaps in the walls and the floor. It was breathtakingly beautiful and frighteningly empty all at once.

“Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human – “ Oliver’s baritone voice sang out with lazy rhythm from where he was still sprawled on the bed. He sounded content and sated and very pleased with himself. “Looks out of the heart burning with purity - for the burden of life is love.”

Suddenly, painfully, it dawned on her that this could be – mostly likely would be – the last time she saw him like this: relaxed, and whole and hers. It could also be the last time they made love and it wasn’t even real; their bodies had not actually joined moments before. They weren’t even within a hundred miles of each other, in “real” terms. But Oliver didn’t notice her dismay or concern _(Some things will never change…)_ and, when she didn’t respond, he took that as his cue to continue.

“No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love - be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines.” His tone had a light cadence, rising and falling as he recited the poem from memory. “The final wish is love - cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied…”

Love. That was the key to everything. Wasn’t it? She turned back towards the bed. Oliver regarded her for a moment, started to say something, thought better of it. She watched as he pushed himself up on his elbows, chin propped in his hands.

“Lay it on me, pussycat,” he said, one eyebrow arching upwards. “What’s got you down?”

Her throat went dry. If 'pussycat' was an attempt at levity, she didn't fall for it. “He could kill you.” _And me. And all of us._

“Yes.” Oliver merely shrugged as if the comment bored him. “He could.”

Melanie wanted to scream. His nonchalance about life and death had always been infuriating. And now, with so much at stake, it cut straight through to her heart. She crossed her arms and turned her head so he wouldn’t see when she started to cry.

“But he won’t.” Definite. Confident. So certain about something he couldn’t possibly know.

Another sigh. His confidence was still as contagious as it had always been. She relented, turned to face him.

“Farouk has to believe it’s real,” he explained, patient but not patronizing. “For it to seem real, it has to **_be_** real. But I…“ He trailed off for a moment and seemed to be mulling something over. “… I’ve taken certain precautions. Practiced. Prepared. Accounted for a thousand different variables.” Something flickered across his face, but he could be inscrutable when he wanted to be, so she couldn’t identify it as uncertainty, fear, or something else entirely. “It’s the only way.”

“’The only way…’” Melanie shook her head as she climbed back into bed. She settled into his arms, leaning her head back against his chest. She wouldn’t get a straight answer and why waste their last seconds together arguing? No matter how hard she pressed him, he refused to give specifics about how he intended to fully drive Farouk from his corporeal form. All she knew was it involved antagonizing David Haller to the point where the most powerful mutant ever known was fully "activated." Whatever that meant. The margin for error was razor-thin and Melanie didn’t possess a genius IQ, wasn’t a telepath, wasn’t “gifted” in that way, but she knew if it went wrong – catastrophically wrong – there wouldn't be a damn thing anyone could do about it.

“We could stay here forever,” she said, musing out loud. “Just like this, together. Stay here and let the world save itself for once.”

“Tempting.” Oliver’s fingers gently teased through her cropped hair. “Are you having second thoughts? Because, if so, I will find another to – “

“Not second thoughts,” she replied with a tiny shake of her head, waving her hand to cut off whatever pat justification he was about to offer. They had been through this dozens of times. This **_was_** the only way. It had to be him. It had to be her. That’s the way the stars aligned. And yet... When she spoke again, her voice was small, barely a whisper.

“Letting him – having Farouk - fully in my head. What will it feel like? Will it...hurt?”

“No.” Oliver’s arms tightened around her. It was impossible to tell if he was being honest, lying, or, maybe, if he truly didn’t know. His voice was nevertheless soothing. “It’ll be quick. Most likely, you won’t even be aware of it when it happens. You'll feel like you went to sleep and then you’ll wake up, and there I’ll be.”

“I’m just…worried I won’t be strong enough – “

“Nonsense.” He leaned in to kiss her shoulder and she felt her anxieties start to ebb away. “You are, and have always been, without question, the strongest woman I ever met.” He lingered, trailing tiny kisses up her neck and nuzzling behind her ear, and she realized she believed every word. “And I’ve met a lot of women and you’re the only one I trust with this. With my life.”

“But not with the details.” She let her eyes fall down to where his hand rested on her thigh, caught the glint from the gold wedding band he wore.

Love.

Sacred ties that bound so strongly that even the Shadow King himself couldn’t sever them.

Love.

She and Oliver, Syd and David. Together, their love was the key to saving the world.

But how it would do that, exactly, she didn’t know. Oliver might have trusted her with his life, but he was adamant about keeping the specifics to himself.

“If you know, he’ll know,” he replied with another one of his dismissive shrugs, reading her thoughts, answering the questions she hadn’t voiced. “There are some things in your mind I can hide from him and some I…can’t.” The stanzas were now out of order, but he continued almost apologetically. “But we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest – “ Kiss. “ - in the arms of love at last.” Kiss. “Must rest in the arms of love. The weight, the weight we carry is love.”

Love. The key to it all.

 _Just a few more minutes_ , she prayed as she maneuvered into position until she was straddling him. _Please give us just a few more --_

“Yes, yes!”

Coincidentally the next lines in the poem, but he spoke them with such exuberance that she laughed, doubled down on her ministrations.

“That’s what I wanted, I always wanted – ” He abruptly stopped mid-sentence and she felt his breath hitch beneath her palms, flat against his chest. His eyes, which had been riveted to her body and so full of mirth seconds ago, were now eerily vacant.

Her voice caught in her throat because she already knew the answer. Her body went slack. “It’s time.”

“He’s almost here,” he confirmed, coming back from wherever he’d ducked off to. She could hear the regret in his voice, but there was resolve there, too. Determination. Focus. “Come, my love…”

And he was kissing her again and the smell of saltwater gave way to a rank, animal-like odor. Just like that, they were standing, fully clothed, back in the labyrinth.

“On the plus side,” Oliver began a bit too cheerfully when he finally let go. “It won’t be an astral projection the next time we’re together. And, as I recall, you still owe me dinner.” His smirk was positively impish. “I intend to collect.”

He took a step backward, and then another, and then he was swallowed up by the darkness.

Melanie closed her eyes, opened her mind.

And waited.

**Author's Note:**

> Update: Finally corrected the typos and tweaked a few bits.


End file.
